Immigrants

Time to tackle this one head-on, I think, after the awful death of Lee Rigby. I've noticed for a couple of years now that any time there's a major terrorist alert or attack in either the UK or the USA, this kind of post appears on Facebook:

Now friends in France and Belgium tell me they are finding it on their Facebook pages too. I have no idea who is putting this out but I suspect their motives. 

I don't know what happens in the USA or France or Belgium where immigrants are concerned, but I do know what happens in the UK and this post is nonsense:

Illegal immigrants in the UK get NO money from the state - and nor should they expect to: they contribute nothing to this country. If they are found to be here illegally, they are arrested, taken to prison and deported unless they can come up with a very good reason to stay.

Asylum seekers are a different matter: an asylum seeker must declare their status on arrival in the UK, saying why they think they should not be deported. They may claim they are at risk of political or religious persecution - in some cases even that their life is in danger - in the country they came from. If they get leave to remain in the UK while their case is investigated, they get £5 a day to live on. No posh houses, no car, no free education or travel, just money for food. And they have no way of knowing when the UK Borders people will come looking to deport them. They do get legal aid but that's because they have no money and are not allowed to hold down a job, no matter how well qualified they are. 

If an immigrant is allowed to remain in the UK, and wants to be a citizen, they then have to pay for the citizenship test and find thousands of pounds for different kinds of visas. 

I know this because my family have been through it. 

It's so easy to debunk this illegal immigrant = welfare scrounger crap that I have to ask why it keeps appearing. I think it's about playing on our fear of immigrants. And not just any old immigrants. The black, brown, Muslim ones. (Not the yellow ones - they're our friends these days.) You know, those people who were, we're told, never in the UK till about 50 years ago (a lie), who have no commitment to 'our' way of life (another lie) and make no contribution to the UK economy (yet another lie). If we go back not that far in history, a lot of us in the UK are from immigrant stock and we are proud of our heritage. 

My message is, let's cut to the nitty-gritty: immigrants are not terrorists. That's what the far right - the people I suspect are putting out messages like the one above on the internet - want us to believe. They are the same as the rest of us. 

The problem of young men like the two in London yesterday and the brothers in Boston is not Islam. These young men have never lived in a Muslim country and would almost certainly reject such a way of life. They like the Western life but they suffer from a lack of status, lack of a decent education, alienation from an economic set-up that excludes them. They're no different from a whole generation of 18-30 year olds in the UK who can only expect the minimum wage while watching the rich get to be very rich. In the UK, that's a real problem and we have to face it.